As an employee, it’s not difficult to understand why incentive travels are so luring. Having planned a concrete getaway for the employees, people can already imagine themselves on a certain place and even look forward to the possibility to earn it. The process of getting away together can create bonds between associates that simply, due to the hectic atmosphere and the amount of business daily maintained, don’t occur any other way; all leading to better business performance in the future. Incentives do what cash never can – give people a lasting effect and induce company loyalty that goes long beyond the incentive period. Travel gets you away and gives you a break from work while simultaneously rewarding you for your efforts. In most cases, an incentive travel program does not only benefit the employees, but it also benefits the entire company.

A recent Incentive Federation study culled a variety of key points relating to the benefits of travel and incentives versus cash. The majority (three thirds) respondents believe that travel awards and merchandise awards are remembered longer than cash awards; that the cash awards are remembered for the shortest time and that they can build a more exciting, memorable program around travel or merchandise than cash.

Another interesting and thorough research was the one conducted by the Incentive Research Foundation in 2012 on 2461 incentive providers, suppliers and buyers. Findings indicate that the trends have stabilized this period compared to the previous four survey periods which indicated a strong positive upward trend for each of the core issues (beginning in July 2009 – October 2010). The positive trend continues with respect to the perceptions of the company’s financial forecast influences.

Respondents in the current survey (September 2012) indicate they are less optimistic and consider the economy as having a less of a positive impact on their ability to plan and implement incentive travel programs when compared with the previous results (in March 2012).

• Most of the respondents (45%) anticipate no change with respect to the program destinations for Incentive Travel Programs in the coming year.
• There has been a significant decrease in program destinations from “International to Domestic” since 2010.
• Forty-eight percent (48%) of the respondents anticipate budgets for Incentive Travel Programs to “Remain Unchanged” this coming year.
• The majority (73%) of the respondents do not anticipate changing (either temporarily or permanently) from “group trips” to “individual travel packages” in the coming year.
• 53% of the respondents indicated that North America was their chosen region for Incentive Travel Destination programs.
• In September 2012, respondents continue to anticipate the impact of the economy to have a “positive” effect on their ability to plan and implement merchandise non-cash incentive programs potentially indicating a positive trend in the coming year.
• In general, respondents indicated that they anticipate most incentive program elements to remain the same in the coming year.
• 51% of the respondents anticipate no changes to the budget for Incentive Programs in the coming year as a result of the recent economic conditions.

As we can see, just the fact that such surveys are being done each year, shows the importance of the incentive travel program, and the meaning it has both for the employers and the employees. Still, we expect the awareness of the great motivating effect incentive travel has on employees will stimulate employers to invest even more money and time into their implementation.

The T-Made team